Tools

"... Expressives like d.mn and b.stard have, when uttered, an immediate and powerful impact on the context. They are performative, often destructively so. They are revealing of the perspective from which the utterance is made, and they can have a dramatic impact on how current and future utterances are p ..."

Expressives like d.mn and b.stard have, when uttered, an immediate and powerful impact on the context. They are performative, often destructively so. They are revealing of the perspective from which the utterance is made, and they can have a dramatic impact on how current and future utterances are perceived. This, despite the fact that speakers are invariably hard-pressed to articulate what they mean. I develop a general theory of these volatile, indispensable meanings. The theory is built around a class of expressive indices. These determine the expressive setting of the context of interpretation. Expressives morphemes act on that context, actively changing its expressive setting. The theory is multidimensional in the sense that descriptives and expressives are fundamentally different but receive a unified logical treatment.

"... Gottlob Frege (1892) is credited with the so-called “principle of compositionality”, also called “Frege’s Principle”, which one often hears expressed this way: Frege’s Principle (so-called) “The meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of the words in it and the way they are combined synt ..."

Gottlob Frege (1892) is credited with the so-called “principle of compositionality”, also called “Frege’s Principle”, which one often hears expressed this way: Frege’s Principle (so-called) “The meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of the words in it and the way they are combined syntactically.” (Exactly how Frege himself understood “Frege’s Principle ” is not our concern here; 1 rather, it is the understanding that this slogan has acquired in contemporary linguistics that we want to pursue, and this has little further to do with Frege.) But why should linguists care what compositionality is or whether natural languages “are compositional ” or not? 2.1.1 An “Empirical Issue”? Often we hear that “compositionality is an empirical issue ” (meaning the question whether natural language is compositional or not)—usually asserted as a preface to expressing skepticism about a “yes ” answer. In the most general sense of Frege’s Principle, however, the fact that natural languages are compositional is beyond any serious doubt. Consider that:

"... We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals a ..."

We propose that the antecedent of a donkey pronoun takes scope over and binds the donkey pronoun, just like any other quantificational antecedent would bind a pronoun. We flesh out this idea in a grammar that compositionally derives the truth conditions of donkey sentences containing conditionals and relative clauses, including those involving modals and proportional quantifiers. For example, an indefinite in the antecedent of a conditional can bind a donkey pronoun in the consequent by taking scope over the entire conditional. Our grammar manages continuations using three independently motivated type-shifters, Lift, Lower, and Bind. Empirical support comes from donkey weak crossover (*He beats it if a farmer owns a donkey): in our system, a quantificational binder need not c-command a pronoun that it binds, but must be evaluated before it, so that donkey weak crossover is just a special case of weak crossover. We compare our approach to situation-based E-type pronoun analyses, as well as to dynamic accounts such as Dynamic Predicate Logic. A new ‘tower ’ notation makes derivations considerably easier to follow and manipulate than some previous grammars based on continuations.

"... Using the programming-language concept of CONTINUATIONS, we propose a new, multimodal analysis of quantification in Type Logical Grammar. Our approach provides a geometric view of in-situ quantification in terms of graphs, and motivates the limited use of empty antecedents in derivations. Just as c ..."

Using the programming-language concept of CONTINUATIONS, we propose a new, multimodal analysis of quantification in Type Logical Grammar. Our approach provides a geometric view of in-situ quantification in terms of graphs, and motivates the limited use of empty antecedents in derivations. Just as continuations are the tool of choice for reasoning about evaluation order and side effects in programming languages, our system provides a principled, type-logical way to model evaluation order and side effects in natural language. We illustrate with an improved account of quantificational binding, weak crossover, wh-questions, superiority, and polarity licensing.

"... This paper proposes a novel, fully compositional analysis of conventional implicatures (CIs) (in the sense of Potts (2005)) in terms of the technique of continuations (Barker 2002, 2004). The paper has both an empirical and a theoretical goal. The empirical goal is to point out the existence of phen ..."

This paper proposes a novel, fully compositional analysis of conventional implicatures (CIs) (in the sense of Potts (2005)) in terms of the technique of continuations (Barker 2002, 2004). The paper has both an empirical and a theoretical goal. The empirical goal is to point out the existence of phenomena (including the

"... van Oostrom for their careful reading of (and, of course, their valuable comments on) previous drafts of this document. In addition, I am grateful to the following people for their comments on an article that formed the basis of §4.4: Raffaella Bernardi, Jan van Eijck, Andres Löh, Gianluca Giorgolo, ..."

van Oostrom for their careful reading of (and, of course, their valuable comments on) previous drafts of this document. In addition, I am grateful to the following people for their comments on an article that formed the basis of §4.4: Raffaella Bernardi, Jan van Eijck, Andres Löh, Gianluca Giorgolo, Christina Unger, as well as two anonymous referees.

"... Abstract. Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) [2, 7] provides a dynamic semantics for discourse that exploits a rich notion of discourse structure. According to SDRT, a text is segmented into constituents related to each other by means of rhetorical relations; the resulting structure, k ..."

Abstract. Segmented Discourse Representation Theory (SDRT) [2, 7] provides a dynamic semantics for discourse that exploits a rich notion of discourse structure. According to SDRT, a text is segmented into constituents related to each other by means of rhetorical relations; the resulting structure, known as a segmented discourse representation structure or SDRS has various semantic effects. This theory has shown how discourse structure makes contributions to the interpretation of a variety of linguistic phenomena, including tense, modality, presupposition, the interpretation of anaphoric pronouns and ellipsis. SDRT exploits dynamic semantics [20, 14] to interpret SDRSs. We investigate here the advantages of integrating SDRT within continuation style semantics of the sort developed in [17].

"... In this paper we look at the interpretation of Quantifier Phrases from the perspective of Symmetric Categorial Grammar. We show how the apparent mismatch between the syntactic and semantic behaviour of these expressions can be resolved in a typelogical system equipped with two Merge relations: one f ..."

In this paper we look at the interpretation of Quantifier Phrases from the perspective of Symmetric Categorial Grammar. We show how the apparent mismatch between the syntactic and semantic behaviour of these expressions can be resolved in a typelogical system equipped with two Merge relations: one for syntactic units, and one for the evaluation contexts of the semantic values associated with these syntactic units. Keywords:

"... This paper argues that certain phenomena related to verb ellipsis (VE) in English suggest a degree of interpretive flexibility for ellipsis sites close to that exhibited by pronominals. Specifically, it is claimed that (a) like pronouns, ellipsis sites may be bound or free, and (b) one set of gramma ..."

This paper argues that certain phenomena related to verb ellipsis (VE) in English suggest a degree of interpretive flexibility for ellipsis sites close to that exhibited by pronominals. Specifically, it is claimed that (a) like pronouns, ellipsis sites may be bound or free, and (b) one set of grammatical mechanisms affords analyses of both